In the Bronx, Fighting for the Right to Play

Running water, squealing children, a Bronx street planted in the heart and heat of a July morning. All together, summer’s trumpets sounded bright and loud Thursday along 196th Street in the Bronx, despite official indifference or bumbling.

With an eye on crime statistics, City Hall this year moved to re-engineer summer recreation, all but eliminating Playstreets, which are closed to traffic, a custom in New York that goes back to 1914.

That came as news to the mayor, a spokeswoman said Thursday, even though it was his own office of criminal justice that had made the cuts. “City Hall was not made aware of this dramatic reduction at the time the decision was made,” the spokeswoman, Olivia Lapeyrolerie, said by email.

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Bishop John Jenik, left, Catholic vicar for the northwest Bronx, and John Garcia, executive director of Fordham Bedford Community Services, were among those who campaigned for a Playstreet on 196th Street.CreditJustin Gilliland/The New York Times

Hmm.

Among the Playstreets closed by the mayor’s office unbeknown to the mayor was 196th Street between Bainbridge and Briggs Avenues. A pocket of calm tucked between blocks with many jagged edges, 196th Street had been the site of a summer Playstreet for more than 25 years. The city’s grand plan was to keep a few Playstreets, under the supervision of the Police Athletic League, and move them to housing projects as an anti-crime measure. Other recreation programs would be expanded.

“They told us the kids could go to Poe Park,” said John Garcia, who started the 196th Street Playstreet when he was 18 years old. He is now 44.

“It’s quite territorial,” said Tollyne Dickerson, who ran the Playstreet for the last few years. “To ask them to walk six or seven blocks — they just want to come downstairs out of their houses. The neighborhood is taking care of the neighborhood. If you understand what I mean.”

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A game of basketball on the Playstreet at 196th Street.CreditJustin Gilliland/The New York Times

That the Playstreet reopened this summer is because of efforts by Ms. Dickerson; Mr. Garcia, now the executive director of Fordham Bedford Community Services; and Bishop John Jenik, the Catholic vicar for the northwest Bronx, a human Gibraltar who has lived in the neighborhood since the 1970s.

A few minutes after 10 on Thursday, Luis Carlos Espinal, age 6, holding the hand of his mother, Maria Espinal, strode down 196th Street. It was his first day. Almost immediately, Alyssa Rivers, 11, took Luis to a table and showed him how to play Connect Four, a neurotic cousin of tick-tack-toe.

Alyssa lives right down the block. So does Luis, and just about all the children playing Nok-Hockey, basketball, soccer and board games, or running on general rampages through the fire-hydrant sprinkler. Luis’s mother said she heard about the Playstreet just this week from a neighbor. Before that, she said, he had been housebound, and it was wearing them both out. “Siempre la casa,” she said. Always the house. “Que problema.”

When Mayor Bill de Blasio moved City Hall operations to the Bronx for a week this spring — it’s, you know, a good idea, and, well, let’s say, an election-year stunt — Ms. Dickerson headed there. “They pulled a lot of people together to listen, and we went into an email frenzy,” she said.

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Tollyne Dickerson, who watched children play on a Bronx Playstreet Thursday, had volunteered to be its director.CreditJustin Gilliland/The New York Times

The mayor’s office said its community affairs unit, the C.A.U., worked on Ms. Dickerson’s request. “C.A.U. continued a dialogue with this resident about this specific site around the same time that City Hall gained awareness of the scope of the cuts and began the reviewing process,” Ms. Lapeyrolerie said.

Ms. Dickerson’s version: “They ran me around.”

Mr. Garcia said other elected officials were contacted and were asked to help pay for a few staff people and equipment. “That went nowhere,” he said.

For the Police Athletic League to run the street would cost $28,000. But Ms. Dickerson volunteered to work as the director without salary. Bishop Jenik and Mr. Garcia put together the money for supplies, and enough to pay wages for her and a few assistants. “It’s about $10,000 to $15,000, maximum,” Mr. Garcia said, and P.A.L. is not involved.

Within a few minutes walk of 196th Street are shelters and housing for people who have been homeless, for people coming out of jail, for others with substance problems. “Our neighborhoods are being overwhelmed by city-backed programs that concentrate poverty,” Mr. Garcia said. “The stock market is at record levels. So are tax revenues. There’s no money for this street.”

As the temperature passed 90, thin arcs of water spidered from a fire hydrant. Dancing through the sprinkling streams was a small boy in a big red T-shirt that reached his knees, followed by a little girl in shorts and top, ready to get soaked right to the jellies on her feet. The street sang.

Email: dwyer@nytimes.com Twitter: @jimdwyernyt

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: A Bronx Playstreet Saved By One Tough Neighborhood. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe